The  Message 
of  the  Modem  Mitrnter 


LIBRARY  OF  THE  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY 

PRINCETON,  N.  J. 

Presented  by 


BX  7232  .J32  1908 
Jackson,  Henry  E.  1869-1939 
The  message  of  the  modern 
minister 


The  Message  of  the 
Mode  rn     Min  iste  r 


Copyright,  1908,  by 
FLEMING   H.  REVELL  COMPANY 


New  York  :  158  Fifth  Avenue 
Chicago :  80  Wabash  Avenue 
Toronto  :  25  Richmond  Street,  W. 
London  :  2 1  Paternoster  Square 
Edinburgh  :     100     Princes    Street 


''A  man's  religion  is  the  chief  fact  luith 
regard  to  him.  By  religion  I  mean  the  thing  a 
man  does  practically  believe;  the  thing  a  man 
does  practically  lay  to  heart,  and  knoiv  for  cer- 
tain, concerning  his  vital  relations  to  this  mys- 
terious Universe,  and  his  duty  and  destiny 
therein,  that  is  in  all  cases  the  primary  thing 
for  him,  and  creatively  determines  all  the  rest." 
Thomas  Carlyle 


INTRODUCTION 

It  has  been  the  custom  In  Congrega- 
tional churches  for  many  years  for  candi- 
dates about  to  be  ordained,  or  Installed, 
to  present  to  an  Ecclesiastical  Council 
statements  of  their  religious  experience 
and  doctrinal  beliefs.  The  following 
paper  was  presented  by  its  author  to  the 
Council  convened  to  consider  the  ques- 
tion of  his  Installation  as  pastor  of  the 
Christian  Union  Congregational  Church 
at  Upper  Montclair,  New  Jersey.  It  is 
more  personal  and  less  formal  than  such 
papers  usually  are.  In  Its  delivery  It 
almost  took  the  form  of  a  sermon  ad 
clerum.  The  Impression  which  it  made 
was  profound,  and  the  wish  was  unan- 
imous that  It  might  be  preserved  In  print 
and  thus  given  to  a  larger  public.  Its 
chief  characteristic  may  be  termed  its 
^'modernism."  It  deals  with  living  ques- 
tions, and  approaches  them  In  unconven- 
tional ways.  The  writer  comes  to  his 
7 


8  Introduction 

subject  by  the  path  of  experience.  He 
has  written  profoundly  because  he  has 
first  lived  profoundly.  He  believes  that 
every  truth  which  is  really  helpful  may 
be  preached,  and  that  no  doctrine  which 
cannot  be  preached  has  any  claim  upon 
the  Christian  minister  or  the  Christian 
public.  While  this  paper  is  modern  it  is 
also  thoroughly  constructive.  There  is 
not  a  destructive  note  in  all  these  pages. 
Without  claiming  that  the  message  of 
the  preacher  for  to-day  will  be  the  mes- 
sage for  all  time,  its  author  has  sought  to 
bring  into  clear  relief  some  of  the  truths 
which  have  most  vital  relation  to  the 
present  time.  That  the  pulpit  has  a 
message  for  to-day  very  different  from 
what  it  had  even  half  a  century  ago  does 
not  admit  of  doubt.  Whether  we  are 
willing  to  admit  it  or  not,  we  study  al- 
most every  subject  from  the  evolutionary 
standpoint.  In  the  old  days  the  Bible 
was  regarded  as  a  book  written  by  the 
hand  of  God;  now  it  is  known  to  be  the 
literature  of  a  people  which  contains  the 
record  of  the  process  by  which  one  nation 
was  taught  the  true  religion  in  order  that 
It   might   become    the    teacher    of    that 


Introduction  9 

religion  to  the  world.  Formerly  this 
earth  was  regarded  as  the  centre  of  a 
limited  creation;  now  we  have  to  adjust 
our  thinking  to  the  conception  of  the 
universe,  which  is  comparatively  a 
modern  conception.  These  changes  do 
not  affect  the  substance  of  doctrine  but 
they  have  changed  the  way  in  which  it 
has  to  be  presented.  The  modern  man 
thinks  in  new  terms,  and  he  who  would 
effectively  preach  to  him  must  use  the 
language  with  which  his  hearer  is  most 
familiar, 

I  commend  the  address  which  is  con- 
tained in  the  following  pages  as  able, 
timely,  and  thoroughly  abreast  of  cur- 
rent thought.  It  contains  no  novel 
teaching,  but  it  is  a  wise  and  balanced 
presentation  of  the  everlasting  realities 
of  religion  as  they  are  related  to  life  and 
thought  in  the  days  in  which  we  are 
living. 

Amory  H.  Bradford. 

First  Congregational  Church, 
Montclair,  New  Jersey, 


The  Message  of  the 
Mo  de  rn     Min  is  te  r 


^'By  religion  I  T?iean  the  power,  whatever  it 
be,  which  makes  a  man  choose  what  is  hard 
rather  than  what  is  easy,  what  is  lofty  and 
noble  rather  than  what  is  mean  and  selfish; 
that  puts  courage  into  timorous  hearts,  and 
gladness  into  clouded  spirits;  that  consoles 
men  in  grief,  misfortune  and  disappointment ; 
that  makes  men  joyfully  accept  a  heavy  bur- 
den; that,  in  a  word,  uplifts  men  out  of  the 
dominion  of  material  things,  and  sets  their 
feet  in  a  purer  and  simpler  region.'" 

Arthur  C.  Benson 

*'An  essentially  religious  attitude  is  necessary 
to  the  noblest  living.  Life  needs  to  be  touched 
with  the  glamour  of  wonder  and  deepened  with 
the  atmosphere  of  reverence.  Men  live  less  by 
knowledge  than  by  an  appreciation  of  what  has 
not  yet  been  gathered  up  in  the  categories  of 
science.  The  great  experiences  of  human  life 
break  in  through  the  closed  circle  of  our 
knowledge ;  we  can  never  anticipate  them  in 
theory.  Life  precedes  philosophy :  in  a  very 
true  sense  men  are  better  than  they  know,  liv- 
ing in  experience  much  that  they  have  not  yet 
formulated  in  terms  of  the  understanding." 
Edward  Howard  Griggs 


The  Message  of  the  Modern 
Minister 


QBVIOUSLY  the  thing  suggested 
first  by  an  exercise  like  this  is  the 
importance  of  knowing  how  and  what  a 
man  thinks.  The  custom  of  the  Congre- 
gational Church  in  asking  an  incoming 
minister  to  make  a  formal  statement  of 
his  views,  is  itself  a  rebuke  to  the  super- 
ficial, but  frequently  expressed  opinion, 
that  it  does  not  matter  what  a  man 
thinks,  but  matters  only  what  he  does. 
Chesterton  did  not  over-state  the  truth 
when  he  said  that  "there  are  some  peo- 
ple, and  I  am  one  of  them,  who  think 
that  the  most  practical  and  important 
thing  about  a  man  is  his  view  of  the  uni- 
verse. We  think  that  for  a  landlady 
considering  a  lodger,  it  is  important  to 
know  his  income,  but  still  more  impor- 
tant to  know   his   philosophy."      This 


14     Message  of  the  Modern  Minister 

statement  is  true  of  any  man,  but  spe- 
cially true  of  the  man  who  attempts  to 
form  the  opinions  of  others.  When  the 
Master  of  Balliol,  Dr.  Jowett,  was  asked 
by  a  woman  who  thought  him  to  be 
liberal  in  his  views  of  religion:  "Sir,  can 
you  tell  us  what  you  really  think  about 
God?"  he  answered:  "Madam,  it  mat- 
ters very  little  what  I  think  about  God; 
but  it  matters  a  great  deal  what  God 
thinks  about  me."  Underneath  Dr. 
Jowett's  answer  is  another  obvious  an- 
swer which  some  one  else  has  added:  "It 
matters  very  much  what  I  think  God 
thinks  about  me."  Since  God  is  the  one 
unescapable  reality  of  a  man's  life,  with- 
out which  one  can  neither  think,  nor 
speak,  nor  act,  it  is  of  the  first  impor- 
tance to  have  true  views  of  Him.  Few 
things  matter  quite  so  much.  A  man's 
very  refusal  to  define  his  attitude  to  God, 
itself  defines  it.  Your  request,  there- 
fore, that  I  present  to  you  an  outline  of 
my  outlook  on  religious  questions,  is  most 
appropriate  and  one  which  I  most  cheer- 
fully grant. 

In  order  to  save  myself  the  embar- 
rassment of  feeling  that  I   am  stating 


Message  of  the  Modern  Minister      15 

views,  Just  for  the  purpose  of  having 
them  dissected,  and  save  you  from  the 
sense  of  the  unreality  of  performing  a 
merely  negative  task,  I  take  the  liberty  of 
letting  you  see  incidentally  my  point  of 
view,  by  stating  some  things  which  have 
more  or  less  recently  impressed  them- 
selves on  me,  in  my  own  experience  as  a 
Christian  and  as  a  preacher, — some 
things  which  I  think  ought  to  be  em- 
phasized to-day  by  the  man  who  attempts 
to  be  a  spiritual  leader.  If  I  can  feel 
that  I  am  preaching  to  you,  I  shall  im- 
mediately feel  at  ease,  and  if  I  tell  you 
what  things  I  think  you  ought  to  em- 
phasize in  your  preaching,  you  can  at 
once  see  what  things  I  deem  important. 
I  suggest  that  after  my  statement,  it 
would  be  most  helpful  if  we  should  have 
a  mutual  conference  about  those  elements 
of  the  Christian  religion  which  its  teach- 
ers ought  to  make  clear  and  prominent, 
if  the  church  is  to  be  a  real  power  and 
service  to  the  men  of  to-day.  I  shall 
never  forget  an  all-night  meeting  held 
last  year  in  Princeton  by  twenty-four 
members  of  our  class,  at  the  tenth  anni- 
versary of  its  graduation  from  the  Theo- 


1 6      Message  of  the  Modern  Minister 

logical  Seminary.  The  subject  of  the 
conference  was  this  very  question. 
There  were  two  facts  upon  which  all  the 
men  agreed  and  which  impressed  me 
most  deeply.  One  was  this :  Every  man 
present  felt  a  sense  of  confusion  and  be- 
wilderment about  his  theological  out- 
look. Every  man  testified  that  the  point 
of  view  given  to  him  ten  years  before, 
and  which  many  of  them  held  at  that 
time,  had  become  unreal  to  him  per- 
sonally, and  had  ceased  to  be  of  value  to 
him  in  his  work.  The  other  was  this : 
Every  man  present  had  an  honest  desire 
to  find  out  what  were  the  essential  and 
fundamental  truths  of  the  Gospel  of 
Christ  and  how  they  ought  to  be  pre- 
sented. The  testimony  of  these  twenty- 
four  ministers  is  most  significant,  for  the 
problem  they  faced  is  one  that  must 
be  continually  faced  by  every  earnest 
Christian  teacher  who  is  awake  to  his 
responsibility.  Therefore  a  conference 
upon  it  on  an  occasion  like  this  is  an  op- 
portunity to  do  a  real  service  for  any 
men  who  may  be  in  a  similar  situation. 

I  propose,  therefore,  to  state  five  prac- 
tical and  fundamental  truths,  made  real 


Message  of  the  Modern  Minister      17 

In  my  experience,  which  I  think  ought  to 
be  controlling  and  guiding  principles  In 
any  minister's  public  teaching. 


Sin  is  a  Reality  and  Salvation  is  a  Present 
Process 

The  first  fact  which  my  experience 
leads  me  to  suggest,  and  which  my  posi- 
tion to-day  reminds  me  of  anew.  Is  this. 
I  do  not  find  that  the  work  of  the  Chris- 
tian minister  becomes  Increasingly  easy, 
but  rather  Increasingly  difficult.  Not 
that  the  preparation  and  preaching  of 
sermons  is  a  burden.  I  love  that  work, 
although  it  Is  an  enormous  task  for  any 
man  to  undertake.  Not  that  the  calling 
and  pastoral  work  are  so  hard.  I  love 
that  too.  What  makes  the  minister's 
work  ever  more  difficult,  is  the  failure  to 
embody  in  one's  own  life  the  Ideals  which 
he  preaches.  As  I  come  to  know  more 
and  more  of  the  needs  and  sorrows  and 
loneliness  of  men,  and  as  I  come  to  know 
more  and  more  the  charm  and  wonder 
and  greatness  of  the  message  of  Jesus,  I 


1 8      Message  of  the  Modern  Minuter 

find  it  Increasingly  hard  to  apply  that 
message  to  that  need  effectively  by  em- 
bodying it  in  my  own  life.  It  was  not 
hard  to  be  a  minister  of  religion  at  a 
time  when  religion  did  not  concern  itself 
with  character  and  when  the  priests  of 
Greece  and  Rome  never  for  a  moment 
regarded  it  as  part  of  their  duty  to  help 
men  to  a  purer  life.  But  to  be  a  Chris- 
tian minister  to-day  is  a  different  matter 
and  is  difficult  chiefly  for  the  very  reason 
that  once  made  it  easy.  "Clever  men," 
said  Huxley,  "are  as  common  as  black- 
berries. The  rare  thing  is  to  find  a  good 
one."  The  rare  and  difficult  thing  for 
the  minister  is  to  be  a  good  man,  and  a 
good  man  on  the  minister's  lips  means  to 
be  the  kind  of  man  he  urges  others  to  be. 
The  subtle  danger  of  professionalism,  a 
relying  on  the  conventional  forms  In- 
stead of  seeking  for  the  substance 
beneath,  uttering  the  letter  of  the  law 
only  from  the  teeth  out,  instead  of  In- 
carnating its  spirit,  is  a  danger  which  I 
find  ever  ready  to  spoil  the  minister's  own 
life  and  make  ineffective  his  message  to 
men.  I  believe  no  man  so  well  as  the 
minister  knows  what  Gladstone  meant 


Message  of  the  Modern  Minister      19 

when  he  said:  "There  Is  one  proposition 
which  the  experience  of  life  has  burned 
into  my  soul.  It  is  the  fear  that  my 
religion  shall  kill  my  morality.  Every 
day  of  my  life  in  thousands  of  different 
ways,  some  great,  some  small,  all  of  them 
subtle,  I  am  tempted  to  that  great  sin." 
My  own  experience  thus  has  helped 
to  giv^e  to  me  my  doctrine  of  sin.  For 
the  study  of  sin,  as  Simpson  says,  if  it  is 
to  be  really  serious  and  effective,  is  a 
study  of  one's  self.  Because  I  myself 
know  what  the  seventh  chapter  of 
Romans  is,  I  believe  sin  is  a  reality.  It 
is  not  merely  involuntary  error,  or  mere 
unripeness,  as  in  an  apple.  It  is  that; 
but  it  is  also  an  act  of  the  will,  a  violation 
of  the  laws  of  life,  and  every  specific  sin 
is  a  form  and  manifestation  of  its  root 
principle,  which  is  selfishness.  I  do  not 
think  that  any  elemental  passion  in  a 
man's  life  is  wrong  in  itself.  Sin  is  just 
the  wrong  use  of  the  right  thing.  That 
such  a  wrong  use  has  been  universally 
made,  there  can  be  no  doubt  in  the  mind 
of  any  man  who  knows  himself  and 
knows  life  as  it  is.  I  believe,  then,  that 
sin  as  a  reality  is  a  cardinal  question  for 


20     Message  of  the  Modern  Minister 

religion  and  philosophy  and  for  practical 
life,  and  is,  therefore,  to  be  emphasized 
by  the  minister. 

Growing  out  of  this  fact  and  cognate 
to  it,  is,  of  course,  the  doctrine  of  for- 
giveness, or  salvation,  or  atonement. 
When  all  other  religious  questions  cease 
to  interest  men,  they  will  still  ask :  What 
is  it  which  saves?  How  can  men  be 
helped  to  be  what  they  want  to  be? 
"There  are  no  men  who  are  not  inter- 
ested to  know  whether  there  is  any  power 
in  the  world  which  will  help  to  overcome 
evil,  to  cure  ignorance,  to  comfort  in 
sorrow,  to  take  out  the  sting  of  remorse 
for  the  past,  to  inspire  with  aspirations 
of  hope  for  the  future." 

Christianity's  method  is  distinct  from 
every  other  which  seeks  to  help 
man  reach  his  ideal.  Humanism  seeks 
to  do  it  by  emancipation  of  the  mind, 
Christianity  by  changing  the  heart  and 
the  will.  "The  one  wishes  to  make  bet- 
ter by  enlightening,  the  other  to  en- 
lighten by  making  better.  This  Is  the 
difference  between  Socrates  and  Jesus," 
a  difference  which  the  Christian  minister 
must  never  lose  sight  of. 


Message  of  the  Modern  Minister     21 

But  just  what  the  Christian  conception 
of  salvation  is — that  is  where  the  min- 
ister's task  and  difficulty  begin;  that  is 
where  his  opportunity  begins  too.  No 
word  is  more  commonly  on  the  lips  of 
Christian  men  than  the  word  "salva- 
tion," and  yet  no  word  is  more  commonly 
misunderstood.  If  any  man  wishes  to 
find  out  whether  that  is  so  or  not,  all  he 
has  to  do  is  to  ask  a  dozen  average 
Christians  to  meet  him  and  state  what 
they  think  salvation  is,  just  what  does 
Christ  do  for  a  man  when  He  saves  him, 
just  what  takes  place  in  the  heart  of  the 
man  who  receives  salvation.  The  an- 
swers he  will  get  will  not  only  astonish 
him,  but  also  discourage  him.  One  great 
duty  of  a  minister  to-day  becomes  per- 
fectly apparent  when  he  discovers  how 
many  Christians  there  are  who  think  that 
salvation  is  a  kind  of  reserved-seat  ticket 
which  they  secure  to  be  used  sometime  in 
the  future.  I  do  not  like  to  use  a  phrase 
which  seems  irreverent,  but  no  simile 
more  dignified  will  describe  the  idea,  the 
idea  that  salvation  is  a  kind  of  plan  by 
which  they  hope  to  escape  from  the  post- 
mortem consequences  of  misdoing.    Such 


22     Message  of  the  Modern  Minister 

a  conception  of  salvation  accounts  largely 
for  the  existence  in  the  churches  of  an  un- 
lovely and  defective  type  of  Christian 
character.  Such  a  conception  is  to-day 
one  of  the  great  barriers  between  the 
church  and  the  thinking  men  outside  of 
it.  It  is  needless  to  say  that  I  think  such 
a  conception  has  no  justification  whatso- 
ever in  the  teaching  of  Jesus. 

In  view  of  this  common  misconcep- 
tion, which  is  admirably  stated  In  the  lit- 
tle book  by  Patterson  DuBois,  called 
*'The  Culture  of  Justice,"  a  need  which  I 
regard  as  one  of  the  greatest  in  the 
church  of  to-day,  I  propose  immediately 
to  begin  a  series  of  as  many  sermons  as 
may  be  necessary,  on  what  I  shall  call 
"The  Practice  of  Salvation,"  In  the  hope 
of  making  clear  what  I  think  is  the 
Christian  conception  of  salvation,  not  as 
a  method  by  which  a  man  is  released 
from  punishment,  because  he  thinks  some 
one  else  has  been  punished  for  him, 
which  is  both  Impossible  and  immoral, 
because  punishment  can  be  experienced 
only  where  there  is  guilt;  therefore,  pun- 
ishment is  not  transferable;  sin  and  Its 
punishment    are    riveted   together;    but 


Message  of  the  Modern  Minister      23 

salvation  as  an  actual  atonement,  through 
the  vicarious  suffering  of  the  Son  of  God, 
a  process  by  which  he  is  being  saved, 
not  from  punishment,  escape  from  which 
is  nowhere  promised  to  him,  but  saved 
from  sin;  a  method  by  which  men  are 
saved  not  by  the  physical  death  of  Jesus, 
but  by  His  love,  as  He  Himself  said, 
that  the  Father  gave  His  Son  because 
He  so  loved  the  world;  a  method  by 
which  the  sense  of  guilt,  the  worst  of  all 
blights  that  fall  upon  the  soul,  is  re- 
moved; a  method  by  which  to  acquire 
the  power  of  moral  recovery;  a  method 
by  which  the  good  in  man  is  reinforced 
and  helped  to  conquer;  a  process  by 
which  a  man  here  and  now  is  made  at 
one,  and  brought  into  harmony  with,  the 
law  of  life,  which  is  the  Will  of  God. 


II 

The  Intellect  is  Limited  and  Faith  is 
Therefore  a  Necessity 

The  second  fact  which  my  experience 
has  deeply  impressed  upon  me,  and 
which  has  a  vast  effect  on  my  work  as  ^ 


14     Message  of  the  Modern  Minister 

minister,  Is  the  need  of  more  Christian 
agnosticism,  such  as  Paul  had,  when 
he  said:  "I  know  in  fragments."  What 
I  mean  is  this.  Every  normal  minister 
feels  that  there  ought  to  be  the  accent  of 
certainty  in  his  public  teaching.  He 
knows  that  It  is  this  note  that  men  hope 
to  find  when  they  come  to  him.  He 
knows  that  men  are  indifferent  to  him 
when  they  have  any  misgiving  that  the 
preacher  knows  no  more  than  they  do 
about  spiritual  things.  He  knows  that 
a  doubtful  gospel  is  a  weakened  and 
divided  message,  as  the  word  doubt 
literally  means.  It  Is  debilitating  to  rule 
life  by  negatives.  He  cannot  express 
himself  in  negatives  and  remain  a  Chris- 
tian minister. 

The  people,  also,  eagerly  desire  more 
definite  knowledge  on  matters  of  the  first 
Importance.  They  feel  with  Harriet 
Martlneau,  that  "we  have  a  right  to 
know."  If  they  feel  the  pressure  of  the 
problem  of  life,  they  feel  that  they  are 
entitled  to  more  light  upon  the  mystery. 
"If  Thou  be  the  Christ,  tell  us  plainly," 
is  the  demand  still  In  the  hearts  of  great 
numbers  of  men.  Who  has  not,  at  times, 


Message  of  the  Modern  Minister      25 

uttered  Carlyle's  cry  that  God  might 
break  through  the  silence  and  speak? 
Without  some  word  from  Him,  even  the 
stars  were  a  "sad  sight"  to  Carlyle. 
Who  has  not  at  times  uttered  Brown- 
ing's prayer? 

"Come     then,     complete     incompletion,      O 
Comer, 
Pant     through     the    blueness,     perfect     the 
Summer!" 

Without  some  message  from  Him,  even 
Summer's  beauty  Is  found  wanting. 

In  view  of  this  eager  desire,  which 
men  have,  for  definfte  Information  about 
their  life  and  destiny,  and  In  view  of  the 
minister's  honest  wish  to  satisfy  this 
need,  It  Is  Impossible  not  to  chafe  under 
the  little  that  we  know.  This  constitutes 
a  chief  difficulty  In  the  minister's  work  as 
a  teacher.  How  little  we  know-of  God 
and  duty  and  Immortality.  "Oh,  that  I 
knew  where  I  might  find  Him."  "Why 
Is  light  given  to  a  man  whose  way  Is 
hid?"  Why  should  the  very  being  of 
God  be  a  question  open  to  discussion? 
Why  should  the  grave  be  an  effectual 
barrier  between  the  living  and  the  dead? 


26     Message  of  the  Modern  Minister 

"Strange,  is  it  not?  that  of  the  myriads,  who 
Before    us    passed    the    Door    of    Darkness 

through. 
Not  one  returned  to  tell  us  of  the  Road, 
Which  to  discover  we  must  travel  too." 


I  think  that  our  ignorance  on  these 
questions  and  the  confident  pulpit  tone 
which  ignores  the  fact  that  there  is  any 
mystery  in  God's  dealings  with  men,  are 
responsible,  not  only  for  the  apparent 
religious  indifference  so  common  to-day, 
but  also  constitute  a  serious  difficulty  for 
the  minister  himself.  It  has  weighed 
heavily  upon  my  own  heart. 

When,  therefore,  I  made  two  dis- 
coveries about  this  fact,  I  felt  that  the 
sun  had  broken  through  the  clouds  for 
me  as  a  minister.  The  two  discoveries 
were  these:  "We  know  enough  for  true 
living,  and  not  too  much  for  noble  liv- 
ing; that  the  things  essential  for  true  liv- 
ing are  surely  known;  that  the  things 
only  known  in  fragments  contain  great 
moral  value  by  their  very  mystery. 

About  some  things  God  has  left  us  in 
no  doubt.  /  Speaking  of  these  venerable 
landmarks,  to  which  a  man  ought  per- 


Message  of  the  Modern  Minister      27 

sistently  to  cling,  Robertson  of  Brighton 

said:  "In  the  darkest  hour  through  which 

a  human  soul  can  pass,  whatever  else  is 

doubtful,  this  at  least  is  certain.    If  there 

be  no  God  and  no  future  state,  even  then 

it  is  better  to  be  generous  than  selfish,  bet-       '. 

ter  to  be  chaste  than  licentious,  better  to       !  t^hjMj^^ 

be  brave  than  be  a  coward."     Of  these       [- 

moral  certainties  at  least  we  know  the 

worth.  {I  began  to  see  also  that^these 

moral    certainties    come    first    in    God's 

order.     If  a  man  would  get   light  on 

life's  mystery,  he  must  first  obey  in  the 

things  about  which  there  is  no  doubt.V*  If 

a  man  has  no  faith  in  the  worth  of  duty,      | 

he  can  have  no  faith  in  God.") 

As  to  the  things  which  are  not  so 
surely  known,  when  I  consciously  took 
the  agnostic  attitude  of  Paul  and  said,  "I 
know  only  in  fragments,"  I  began  to  see 
that  there  was  a  great  moral  value  in  i 
mystery.  If  a  man  knew  for  certain  the 
result  and  reward  of  a  virtuous  action, 
his  act  would  cease  to  have  moral  worth 
and  become  enlightened  selfishness.  All 
heroism  would  be  at  once  eliminated.  If 
a  man  could  know  the  future  his  knowl- 
edge would  convert  his  future  into  a  past 


2  8     Message  of  the  Modern  Minister 

and  as  his  body  walked  forward,  his  face 
would  be  where  the  back  of  his  head  is, 
looking  over  the  path  already  trod;  this 
would  paralyze  his  will  for  present 
action.  Ignorance  of  the  future  is  one 
of  man's  chiefest  boons.  It  prevents 
trouble  from  crushing  him  twice. 
Mystery  has  a  distinct  positive  moral 
value.  It  is  what  the  old  philosophers 
called  an  "advantageous  deficiency." 

From  the  time  that  Professor  Huxley 
invented  the  word  "agnostic,"  it  has  been 
made  to  stand  for  two  very  opposite 
Ideas.  The  agnosticism  of  the  positivlst 
regards  the  unknowable  as  a  stone  wall 
too  hard  to  pierce,  too  high  to  see  over, 
and  an  insult  to  his  intelligence.  The 
Christian  agnosticism  Is  a  sane,  humble 
confession  of  the  limits  of  the  human 
Intellect,  a  limitation  wnth  a  distinct 
moral  value.  The  abuse  of  the  Idea  has 
caused  Christian  men  to  be  afraid  of  the 
word  and  suffer  in  consequence  a  serious 
loss.  The  true  Christian  agnosticism 
was  one  of  the  most  illuminating  dis- 
coveries In  my  life,  very  far-reaching  in 
its  application.  Its  vast  Importance 
becomes     apparent     when     we     notice 


Message  of  the  Modern  Minister      29 

how  many  practical  questions  it  illumi- 
nates. 

The  discovery  helped  me  to  see  that 
all  great  truths  are  dual.  They  have 
two  sides  which  are  opposite,  but  not 
contradictory.  Christian  agnosticism  pre- 
vents a  man  from  accepting  one  side 
alone  and  emphasizing  it  by  denying  its 
opposite,  one  of  the  commonest  of  mis- 
takes, but  rather  teaches  him  to  see  the 
truth  of  both,  up  to  the  limits  of  his 
knowledge  and  to  postpone  any  attempt 
at  a  final  reconciliation  until  some  fu- 
ture day,  when  more  light  shall  break 
upon  them.  This  single  fact  gives  a 
working  reconciliation  between  God's 
sovereignty  and  man's  free  will,  between 
love  and  duty,  as  principles  of  action, 
between  truth  and  beauty  as  elements  of 
God's  world. 

The  discovery  helped  me  to  avoid  the 
mistake  of  dividing  a  man  into  depart- 
ments and  thinking  that  any  one  alone 
was  a  sufficient  guide  for  life,  helped  me 
to  see  that  the  division  of  mental  powers 
into  feeling  and  knowing  and  willing,  is 
a  theoretic  distinction  in  function  alone, 
and  that  in  every  act  of  a  man's  life. 


30     Message  of  the  Modern  Minister 

these  powers  must  interact,  that  for  sane 
living  the  whole  man  must  act,  heart 
and  head  are  both  needed. 

The  discovery  did  me  a  serv^ice  of  un- 
told value,  when  it  showed  me  that  there 
were  some  truths  which  are  too  im- 
portant to  rest  on  proof,  a  fact  strongly' 
stated  in  Tennyson's  "Ancient  Sage" : 

''Thou  canst  not  prove  the  Nameless,  O,  my 

son, 
Nor  canst  thou  prove  the  world  thou  movest 

in; 
Thou   canst   not   prove  that   thou   art  body 

alone, 
Nor  canst   thou   prove   that   thou   art  spirit 

alone  ; 
Nor  canst  thou  prove  that  thou  art  both  in 

one; 
Thou    canst    not    prove    that    thou    art    im- 
mortal, no, 
Nor  yet,  that  thou  art  mortal,  nay,  my  son, 
Thou  canst  not  prove  that  I  who  speak  with 

thee 
Art  not  thyself  in  converse  with  thyself; 
For  nothing  worthy  proving  can  be  proven, 
Nor  yet  disproved,  wherefore^  thou  be  wise 
Cleave  ever  to  the  sunnier  side  of  doubt 
And    cling   to    faith    beyond    the    forms    of 

Faith." 


Message  of  the  Modern  Minister     31 

The  discovery  saves  the  Christian  man 
from  the  shallow  conceit,  revealed  in  so 
many  creeds  of  the  past,  that  assumes  to 
analyze  and  classify  and  formulate  a 
complete  plan  of  the  Universe,  the  con- 
ceit against  which  Carlyle  protested 
when  he  said  that  some  Christians  talk  as 
if  God  were  their  next-door  neighbor  and 
they  were  intimately  acquainted  with  all 
His  affairs.  After  stating  the  funda- 
mentals in  our  creeds,  a  large  margin  or 
unexplored  remainder  ought  to  be  left 
for  faith,  in  regard  to  which  a  man  ought 
to  say  with  Paul,  "I  know  only  in  frag- 
ments." It  is  for  this  reason  that  the 
Christian  poets  are  the  wisest  of  theo- 
logians, dealing  with  concrete  facts  and 
leaving  a  margin  for  the  imagination, 
which  is  faith.  The  poet  is  not  like  the 
philosopher  in  Emerson's  poem,  who  is 
lined  with  eyes  inside,  and  who  tries  to 
catch  the  unconscious  heart  in  the  very 
act.  In  such  an  analytical  process,  the 
sage  unmakes  the  man.  The  work 
and  methods  of  the  minister  and  the 
minstrel,  as  their  names  indicate,  lie 
close  together  and  in  many  respects  are 
identical. 


32     Message  of  the  Modern  Minister 

The  discovery  made  the  Holy  Spirit 
real  to  me.  I  got  no  help  from  the  theo- 
logical formulas  as  to  the  third  person  of 
the  Trinity.  I  got  no  help  from  the 
loose  mechanical  descriptions  of  what  is 
called  the  baptism  of  the  Holy  Ghost. 
But  it  was  a  real  help  when  I  saw  that 
the  Holy  Spirit  was  just  the  life  of  God 
in  the  soul.  When  the  intellect  could 
not,  by  searching,  find  out  God,  the  Holy 
Spirit  did  just  what  the  intellect  could  not 
do,  revealed  God  through  the  funda- 
mental instincts  of  the  soul,  creating  and 
developing  what  might  be  called  a  sixth 
sense. 

The  discovery  helps  a  man  to  see  that 
just  because  mystery  out-tops  knowledge, 
therefore  the  appropriate  attitude  is  one 
of  trust.  The  world  being  what  it  is, 
and  man  being  limited  as  he  is,  the  trust- 
ful life  is  the  only  rational  life.  It  alone 
brings  into  the  human  heart  the  tranquil- 
lity of  God. 

"I  have  always  had  one  lode-star;  now, 
As  I  look  back,  I  see  that  I  have  halted 
Or  hastened,  as  I  looked  towards  that  star — 
A  need,  a  trust,  a  yearning  after  God." 


Message  of  the  Modern  Minister     ^2 

I  think  the  great  contribution  which 
the  noble  poem  of  Job  has  made  to  man 
is  the  sanity  of  liv^ing  a  life  of  trust  in  a 
world  which  we  do  not  understand. 
After  he  and  his  friends  had  made  their 
answer  to  his  problem,  it  still  remained 
an  open  wound.  Then  God  presents  to 
Job  indecipherable  mystery  and  for  the 
first  time  Job  is  comforted.  Job  flings 
at  God  a  dozen  riddles,  God  flings  back 
at  Job  a  hundred  riddles  and  Job  is  at 
peace.  He  has  discovered  that  the  trust- 
ful life  is  the  only  sane  life  for  man 
whose  keenest  knowledge  cannot  com- 
pass a  tithe  of  the  wonders  that  lie  at  his 
feet. 

The  discovery  saves  the  Christian 
from  intellectual  pride  and  helps  him 
combine  a  positive  faith  with  humility, 
such  as  is  combined  in  Tennyson's  state- 
ment, "I  hardly  dare  name  His  Name, 
but  take  away  belief  in  the  self-conscious 
personality  of  God,  and  you  take  away 
the  backbone  of  the  world." 

The  discovery  saves  the  man  of  the 
world  from  the  mistakes  he  so  often 
makes  in  times  of  grief  and  perplexity, 
saves    him    from    dashing    himself    in 


34     Message  of  the  Modern  Minister 

rage  against  a  wall  which  is  too  hard 
to  pierce  and  falling  back  bruised 
and  weary.  It  would  keep  him  from 
stumbling  over  his  own  head.  It  would 
help  him  to  see  that  the  Bible  does 
not  cease  to  be  a  lamp  to  his  feet  because 
it  does  not  reveal  all  he  eagerly  desires  to 
know.  "It  is  like  a  lantern  he  carries  in 
his  hand  on  a  dark  night.  It  does  not 
illumine  the  whole  forest  through  which 
he  picks  his  way.  It  sheds  a  ray  of  light 
on  the  path  on  which  he  walks  and  shows 
him  where  to  put  his  foot  in  his  next  step. 
To  reveal  light  for  each  day's  duty,  is  all 
the  knowledge  that  God  meant  revela- 
tion to  give.  The  thing  which  such  a 
man  most  needs  is  the  attitude  of  Chris- 
tian agnosticism,  which  leads  him  to  say 
with  Paul,  "Even  as  things  are,  there 
abide  faith,  hope,  and  love." 

It  seems  clear  to  me,  therefore,  that 
the  attitude  of  Christian  agnosticism  is 
the  very  opposite  of  a  denial  of  religion. 
It  is  one  of  the  most  needed,  positive,  and 
Indispensable  elements  in  any  religion 
that  can  be  called  true.  My  contention 
is  that  one  of  the  most  needed  and  posi- 
tive messages  of  the  minister  to-day  to 


Message  of  the  Modern  Minister     2S 

men,  both  Inside  and  outside  the  church, 
is  the  necessity  of  living  the  trustful  life; 
and  I  use  the  word  "agnosticism"  just 
for  the  purpose  of  emphasizing  that  fact. 
The  word  "agnosticism"  is  misunder- 
stood because  it  has  been  misapplied;  but 
the  word  "faith"  is  no  less  misunder- 
stood. When  the  word  "faith"  is  used, 
men  generally  think  of  Intellectual 
dogmas.  It  never  meant  that  to  Jesus. 
To  Him  It  meant  a  reliance  upon  the  in- 
tuitions and  not  upon  the  reason.  To 
rescue  faith  from  philosophy  and  make  it 
mean  what  it  means  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment, is  one  of  the  great  tasks  for  the 
minister.  Until  men  are  led  to  take 
Paul's  attitude  of  agnosticism,  there  can 
be  no  place  In  their  lives  for  faith,  In  the 
New  Testament  sense,  not  an  Intellectual 
creed,  but  a  living  trust.  The  first  thing 
to  be  said  about  the  three  mystic  virtues, 
faith,  hope  and  love,  which  Christianity 
invented,  is  that  they  are  unreasonable,  a 
fact  which  Chesterton  has  well  pointed 
out.  Indeed,  this  is  their  chief  merit. 
They  are  not  the  product  of  reasoning. 
They  are  designed  to  do  what  the  reason 
is  unable  to  do;  to  teach  all  men  how  to 


^6     Message  of  the  Modern  Minister 

be  guided  by  faith,  hope  and  love,  rather 
than  depend  on  the  lame  and  limited 
power  of  reason,  I  regard  as  among  the 
minister's  first  and  chiefest  functions. 


Ill 


Life  Must  he  Construed  in  Terms,  not 
of  Matter,  hut  of  Spirit 

The  third  fact  which  my  experience 
has  shown  to  me  to  be  of  primal  impor- 
tance to  the  minister  is  this.  He  must 
look  at  life  in  terms  of  spirit,  not  in  terms 
of  matter.  Whether  the  mind  is  a  func- 
tion of  the  brain,  or  whether  man  is  es- 
sentially a  spirit  who  uses  a  body  as  an 
instrument  for  temporary  purposes.  Is  a 
crucial  question  that  divides  Christian 
from  unchristian  thought.  On  this  ques- 
tion the  minister  must  get  the  certainty 
that  Is  born  of  pure  and  spiritual  vision 
and  on  It  he  must  dogmatize,  for  unless 
he  can  believe  that  man  was  not  born  to 
die,  he  could  be  a  teacher  of  ethics,  but 
not  a  teacher  of  Christianity.  This  is 
the  citadel  for  Christian  faith,  and  it  will 
be  of  little  use  for  her  ministers  to  guard 


Message  of  the  Modern  Minister     21 

the  outposts  while  the  citadel  itself  is  in 
danger. 

I  well  remember  the  challenge  made 
to  me  by  a  physician  at  an  operation  per- 
formed on  Dr.  Day,  a  brilliant  professor 
in  Swarthmore  College.  Years  previously 
he  had  received  a  blow  on  the  head. 
After  some  years  it  so  affected  the  brain 
that  the  man's  faculties,  one  by  one,  were 
lost.  I  was  present  at  the  operation  at 
the  family's  request.  With  consummate 
skill,  the  surgeons  opened  the  head  and 
located  the  trouble.  During  the  process, 
I  asked  Dr.  Mitchell,  a  consulting  sur- 
geon, this  question:  If  a  slight  Injury  to 
the  brain  could  rob  Dr.  Day  of  his 
faculties,  thought,  memory  and  speech, 
where  is  the  man  now,  the  spirit  that 
made  him  what  he  was,  the  man  we  knew 
and  loved?  Dr.  Mitchell  answered  the 
question  by  asking  another.  You  are  a 
Christian  minister,  are  you  not?  When 
I  answered  yes,  "Then,"  said  he,  "that 
question  is  one  for  you  to  answer." 
During  the  entire  night  after  the  opera- 
tion I  sat  In  meditation  upon  Dr.  Mit- 
chell's answer.  I  accepted  the  challenge. 
Unless  I  could  accept  It  with  confidence,  I 


38      Message  of  the  Modern  Minister 

could  not  be  a  minister.  Since  then  I 
have  had  a  near  view  of  death,  and  what 
I  saw  then  makes  it  unnecessary  for  me 
longer  to  argue  the  question  with  myself. 
I  know  with  the  certainty  born  of  direct 
vision. 

''We  may  question  with  wand  of  science, 
Explain,  deride  and  discuss; 
But  only  in  meditation 
The  m5'Stery  speaks  to  us." 

This  is  the  one  article  of  faith  which 
Jesus  submitted  to  Martha.  Jesus  made 
it  a  cardinal  question  of  belief.  When 
Martha  came  to  Him  on  the  death  of  her 
brother  and  was  not  satisfied  with  a  far- 
off  resurrection,  but  asked  for  some 
present  comfort,  He  said:  "I  am  [now] 
the  resurrection  and  the  life.  He  that 
believeth  on  Me  shall  never  die.  Be- 
lieveth  thou  this?"  What  was  it  that 
Jesus  asked  her  to  believe?  It  was  this, 
that  Lazarus  was  not  mere  matter,  sub- 
ject to  decay,  but  was  spirit  and  that  he 
was  alive.  He  asked  her  to  believe  In 
the  spiritual  nature  of  man,  to  trust  the 
logic  of  the  heart  not  of  the  head,  to 


Message  of  the  Modern  Minister     39 

believe  In  the  absolute  continuity  of  life, 
a  belief  not  found  in  Jewish  or  pagan 
literature  before  the  time  of  Christ.  If 
I  were  asked  to  state  in  one  word  the  real 
function  of  the  Christian  minister,  I 
would  say  that  it  is  to  teach  men  how  to 
live  under  the  aspect  of  eternity.  It  is 
of  the  first  importance  for  men  to  know 
that  they  are  now  In  eternity.  The  dis- 
tinction between  time  and  eternity  is  both 
false  and  harmful.  What  we  call  time 
has  in  fact  no  existence  at  all.  It  is 
merely  a  conventional  idea  invented  for 
practical  convenience.  It  is  just  that 
section  of  eternity  of  which  we  are  con- 
scious. In  speaking  of  the  Puritan  and 
Huguenot,  Carlyle  said: 

"It  Is  a  fruitful  kind  of  study,  that  of  men 
who  do  In  every  deed  understand  and  feel  at 
all  moments  that  they  are  in  contact  with 
God,  that  the  right  and  wrong  of  this  little 
life  has  extended  itself  into  eternity  and 
infinitude;  It  Is  at  bottom  my  religion  too." 

This  fact  which  Jesus  regarded  as 
fundamental  has  a  vast  practical  sig- 
nificance, a  significance  strangely  over- 
looked  in  the    Middle   Ages,   strangely 


40     Message  of  the  Modern  Minister 

overlooked  also  in  our  day,  though  for  a 
very  different  reason.  Very  subtle  is  the 
danger  that  it  will  be  obscured  to-day 
by  the  demands  of  humanitarian  move- 
ments. The  poor  of  course  must  be  cared 
for  and  protected.  Jesus  made  such  ef- 
fort the  real  test  of  the  sincerity  of  re- 
ligion. For  it  is  an  unescapable  law  that 
a  man's  religious  life  goes  up  no  higher 
on  the  perpendicular,  that  is  towards 
God,  than  it  goes  out  on  the  horizontal, 
that  is  towards  men.  Certainly  no  man 
ever  more  sympathetically  responded  to 
the  needs  of  the  poor  than  did  Jesus,  and 
yet  He  always  gave  a  perpetual  primacy 
to  the  spiritual  in  man.  The  Christian 
Church  must  never  do  otherwise.  It  is 
most  illuminating  to  discover  that  such 
primacy  as  Jesus'  sanity  gave  to  the  spir- 
itual, instead  of  neglecting  material  de- 
mands, is  in  fact  the  best  inspiration  for 
securing  them  and  the  best  guardian  of 
them  when  they  are  secured.  In  propor- 
tion as  souls  are  valued,  bodies  will  be 
properly  treated.  No  statement  needs 
more  emphatic  reiteration  to-day,  for 
the  sake  of  rich  and  poor  alike,  than 
this,  that  man  himself  is  of  more  value 


Message  of  the  Modern  Minister     41 

than  property.  The  condition  that 
makes  money  dear  and  men  cheap  has 
no  more  uncompromising  enemy  than 
the  Idea  which  Is  an  axiom  In  Christian 
thought  that  the  meanest  unit  of  society 
has  value  because  It  has  a  soul. 

I  regard  this,  then,  as  one  of  the  chief 
truths  which  the  minister  ought  to  teach 
to  the  men  of  to-day,  or  any  day,  to  teach 
them  what  Dante  said  Virgil  taught  him : 
*'You  taught  me  how  to  be  eternal." 

IV 

The  Cross  in  Our  Experience  is  a  Means 
to  a  Good  End 

The  fourth  fact  to  which  my  experi- 
ence as  a  man  and  a  minister  has  given 
outstanding  Importance,  Is  the  fact  that 
the  need  of  some  w^orkable  attitude  to 
suffering  is  among  the  deepest  of  all 
human  needs.  Few  subjects  have 
haunted  me  more  than  this ;  on  few  sub- 
jects have  I  preached  more  frequently. 
Joseph  Parker  advised  ministers  that 
they  ought  always  to  preach  to  the  men 
in   the  pews  who   are   In  sorrow :   that 


42     Message  of  the  Modern  Minister 

means  all  of  them.  Dr.  Watson  said 
when  he  closed  his  ministry  in  Liverpool, 
that  if  he  had  his  life  to  live  over  again, 
he  would  be  careful  to  do  three  things  in 
particular.  He  would  preach  shorter 
sermons;  he  would  be  more  attentive  to 
his  English;  and  he  would  preach  more 
comfortingly.  I  cannot  yet  appreciate 
why  he  should  give  so  much  importance 
to  the  first  two  suggestions,  but  I  am 
quite  sure  that  the  last  one  needs  all  the 
emphasis  which  he  gives  it  and  more. 
From  my  own  experience,  I  can  ap- 
preciate the  feeling  of  that  sensitive 
and  brilliant  young  student  whose  ex- 
perience Dr.  Fairbairn  relates.  When 
he  entered  the  pulpit  for  the  first  time 
and  faced  the  upturned  eyes  of  men, 
there  came  such  a  vision  of  the  evils  that 
filled  life  and  the  impotence  of  the 
preacher  and  the  word  he  preached, 
either  to  mend  or  to  end  them,  that  he 
vowed  to  God  in  whose  goodness  he  still 
believed,  that  if  he  were  allowed  to  escape 
with  his  reason  from  that  appalling 
place,  he  would  not  again  lift  up  his  voice 
in  a  pulpit  until  he  had  a  message  better 
fitted  for  the  supreme  crisis  of  the  soul  so- 


Message  of  the  Modern  Minister     43 

journing  amidst  scenes  so  confused  and 
perplexing.  The  message  never  came 
and  he  never  returned  to  the  pulpit.  I 
believe  he  was  right  so  far  as  this,  that  if 
the  minister  has  no  gospel  for  the  sor- 
rows of  life,  his  place  is  not  in  the  pulpit. 
I  understand  that  no  difficulty  is  so  often 
presented  in  literature  as  this.  I  under- 
stand that  it  remains  an  unsolved 
problem  in  philosophy.  I  also  know  that 
every  man  is  forced  to  find  for  himself  a 
moral  reason  for  suffering.  I  also  know 
that  just  as  ''nothing  so  marks  man's 
progress  as  the  successive  solutions  he 
has  attempted  to  this  problem,"  so  there 
is  no  finer  or  surer  test  of  each  man's 
success  in  life  than  the  personal  attitude 
he  takes  to  it.  There  is,  for  example,  no 
surer  indication  of  the  temper  and  out- 
look of  Tennyson,  Longfellow  and 
Browning,  than  the  solution  which  each 
one  offers  to  this  question.  The  same  is 
true  of  every  other 'Christian  man. 

I  believe  that  Christianity  does  not 
offer  a  final  solution  for  the  existence  of 
pain,  but  I  believe  that  Christianity  offers 
a  final,  workable  attitude  to  it.  Jesus 
never  explained  the  problem  of  suffering. 


44     Message  of  the  Modern  Minister 

He  just  brought  God  into  It.  Burne- 
Jones,  when  he  prepared  his  mosaic  of 
"Christ  on  the  Tree  of  Life,"  wrote  at 
the  foot  his  favorite  text,  in  the  words  of 
Vulgate,  "In  mundo  pressuram  habebi- 
tis"  (In  the  world  ye  shall  have  pressure) 
— words  that  seemed  to  him  in  a  peculiar 
manner  to  express  the  burden  and  pres- 
sure of  life.  "But  I  have  overcome  the 
world."  All  that  he  knew  of  religion, 
he  said,  all  that  he  believed  of  Christian 
faith,  was  summed  up  in  these  words.  If 
Christ  made  that  word  good,  then  He 
is  really  our  God.  That  is  the  minis- 
ter's message.  Jesus  met  suffering  and 
worsted  it  on  its  own  ground.  The  same 
victory  is  possible  for  His  followers. 

The  word  "cross"  has  had  In  the  past 
two  distinct  meanings.  It  Is  the  symbol 
of  all  that  is  most  precious  In  the  Chris- 
tian life;  It  represents  what  Christ  has 
done  for  us,  and  as  such,  it  Is  a  strength 
and  comfort.  It  also  stands  for  what 
we  are  called  upon  to  endure  for  Him, 
and  as  such  It  Is  a  test  and  burden  and 
conflict.  Both  Ideas  are  reflected  fre- 
quently In  Christian  song  and  experience. 
I  believe  the  time  will  come  when  the 


Message  of  the  Modern  Minister     45 

word  "cross"  will  acquire  in  men's 
thought  a  third  and  new  meaning.  It 
will  stand  for  suffering  as  a  means  of  joy. 
There  is  no  conviction  which  I  more 
tenaciously  hold  than  this,  that  on  the 
other  side  of  every  cross-bearing,  there  is 
a  joy  and  an  experience,  for  the  sake  of 
which  the  cross  is  given;  that  all  pain 
willingly  borne  brings  immediate  bless- 
ing; that  the  gladdest  people  in  the  world 
are  not  those  who  have  no  crosses,  but 
those  who  have.  This  statement  is  veri- 
fied in  the  lives  of  men  irrespective  of 
their  attitude  to  the  Christian  faith. 
The  insight  into  spiritual  realities  which 
an  experience  of  pain  gave  to  the  scien- 
tist, John  George  Romanes,  who  aban- 
doned the  Christian  faith  of  his  child- 
hood and  then  returned  to  it,  is  a  suf- 
ficient and  beautiful  demonstration  that 
it  is  a  universal  truth. 

There  are  few  messages  from  the 
Christian  minister  more  needed  than  this 
— needed  by  the  minister  himself;  for  if 
the  minister  has  begun  his  work,  har- 
assed by  doubts,  created  for  him  by  his 
university  or  theological  studies,  and  dis- 
tressed because  he  lacks  the  accent  of  cer- 


46     Message  of  the  Modern  Minister 

talnty  in  his  message,  there  is  no  surer 
cure  for  his  difficulties  than  an  honest 
effort  to  minister  to  the  needs  and  sor- 
rows of  men  and  women; — needed  also 
for  the  men  of  to-day,  for,  if  men  could 
once  see  that  suffering  is  God's  minister 
to  manhood,  and  that  "when  pain  ends 
gain  ends  too,"  then  the  bitterness  and 
weariness  of  spirit,  so  characteristic  of 
our  day  and  which  is  far  worse  than  any 
philosophical  pessimism,  would  cease  to 
exist.  To  meet  this  settled  weariness 
of  spirit  the  Christian  minister  of  to-day 
must  stand  as  a  robust  optimist,  such  as 
Browning  described  himself  to  be, 

**One  who  never  turned  his  back 
But  marched  breast  forward, 
Never  doubted  clouds  would  break, 
Never  dreamed,  though  right   were  worsted, 
Wrong  would  triumph, 
Held  \\t  fall  to  rise, 
Are  baffled  to  fight  better, 
Sleep  to  wake." 


Message  of  the  Modern  Minister     47 


The  Christ  of  the  Gospels  is  the  Sole  and 
Sufficient  Guide  for  Life 

The  fifth  fact  born  out  of  my  experi- 
ence which  I  mention  last,  because  I  think 
it  is  the  chief  fact  to  be  emphasized  to- 
day by  the  Christian  minister,  is  the  sole 
sovereignty  of  Jesus,  as  a  guide  for  life. 
No  other  single  fact  in  my  Christian  ex- 
perience has  more  deeply  impressed  me 
than  the  absolute  uniqueness  and  depend- 
ableness  of  Jesus  asHe  is  presented  in  the 
four  gospels.  After  a  man  has  preached 
for  ten  years  and  tried  many  diverse 
methods  and  lines  of  thought  and  be- 
come more  or  less  acquainted  with  books 
and  poets  and  philosophers,  he  comes  to 
feel  that  nothing  is  worth  preaching 
about,  except  the  life  and  teaching  of 
Jesus.  Certainly  all  else  assumes  a 
vastly  smaller  importance  in  comparison. 
That  statement  of  Browning,  which  I 
used  to  think  was  the  exaggeration  of  a 
devotee,  I  now  see  and  believe  to  be 
literally  true. 


48     Message  of  the  Modern  Minister 

*'I  say  the  acknowledgment  of  God  in  Christ 
Accepted  by  thy  reason,  solves  for  thee 
All  questions  in  this  earth  and  out  of  it." 

I  believe  that  one  of  the  greatest  needs 
of  the  Christian  church  to-day  is  a  larger 
acquaintance  with  the  four  gospels.  The 
four  gospels  are  as  little  generally  known 
as  any  books  on  the  market  to-day :  They 
are  not  either  seriously  or  honestly 
studied  by  any  very  large  number  of  men 
inside  the  church,  or  out  of  It.  Few 
things  are  less  known  than  the  position 
of  Jesus  on  moral  questions.  Few  things 
remain  more  undiscovered  than  His  great 
words.  In  a  peculiar  sense  the  four 
gospels  are  Christianity's  text-book.  It 
is  of  the  first  importance  for  the  Chris- 
tian to  know  his  own  text-book.  I  think 
that  the  second  Sunday  service  In  every 
church  should  be,  not  a  preaching  service, 
but  a  teaching  service,  an  Informal  and 
open  Bible  class  for  the  study  of  the  New 
Testament.  Such  a  service  would  be 
more  difficult  to  conduct  than  a  preaching 
service,  for  In  It  the  pulpit  would  be 
called  upon  to  explain  and  defend  its  own 
statements.    But  It  would  fairly  face  the 


Message  of  the  Modern  Minister     49 

need  of  a  class  of  men  to-day  who  are 
disposed  to  think  that  the  pulpit  is  a 
*'coward's  castle"  and  that  Christianity 
cannot  be  discussed  because  it  has  noth- 
ing to  say  for  itself.  It  seems  to  me  that 
nothing  could  be  more  fitting  than  to  see 
the  members  of  any  Christian  church  en- 
gaged once  a  week  in  an  honest  study  to 
find  out  accurately  what  the  four  gospels 
say  about  Jesus  and  His  teaching. 

It  seems  probable  that  during  the  next 
ten  years  the  four  gospels  will  be  sub- 
jected to  a  more  searching  criticism  than 
ever  before,  but  a  sound  historical  criti- 
cism is  not  a  thing  to  be  feared.  So 
long  as  the  fundamental  principles  of 
evidence  are  kept  In  mind,  the  four 
gospels  will  not  suffer  harm.  If  Jesus 
did  not  say  the  words  attributed  to  Him, 
then  the  man  who  did  is  my  Christ;  that 
is  to  say,  I  believe  the  four  gospels,  as  we 
have  them,  are  their  own  evidence.  I 
believe  that  fact  is  more  important  than 
Is  generally  appreciated.  The  story  of  a 
perfect  life  is  as  much  a  miracle  among 
books  as  the  perfect  life  of  Christ  Is 
among  men.  Here  is  a  picture  of  a  per- 
fect goodness,  written  not  by  men  of  gen- 


so     Message  of  the  Modern  Minister 

ius,  but  by  the  hands  of  lowly  men,  who 
frequently  misunderstood  Him,  and  yet 
they  never  record  any  saying  of  Jesus  of 
which  you  could  say,  I  w^ish  Jesus  had 
not  said  that.  Here  is  a  question  of  the 
first  importance  for  literary  students. 
The  only  answer  I  am  able  to  make  to 
that  question  is  the  answer  by  Tennyson, 
"Something  sealed  the  lips  of  that  evan- 
gelist." The  four  gospels  are  not  ordi- 
nary literature. 

I  conceive  it  to  be  the  chief  duty  of  the 
minister  to  bring  men  and  women  face  to 
face  with  the  portrait  of  Jesus,  assum- 
ing nothing  about  it  except  that  we  have 
it  in  our  hands.  I  would  first  of  all  have 
men  become  lovers  of  Jesus  by  becoming 
acquainted  with  Him.  I  would  leave  all 
metaphysical  and  theological  questions 
alone  until  that  is  done.  Not  that  the- 
ology is  not  important.  Every  man  who 
thinks  on  religious  matters  must  have 
a  theology.  To  refuse  to  theologize  is  to 
refuse  to  think  on  religious  things,  but 
theology  to  be  of  any  value  must  be  not  a 
formal  product,  nor  a  party  badge,  but  a 
vital  outgrowth  of  experience.  We  must 
get  our  data  before  we  draw  our  con- 


Message  of  the  Modern  Minister      51 

elusions.  This  is  the  only  proper  ap- 
proach both  logically  and  historically. 
The  first  disciples  came  to  their  views  of 
Jesus's  nature  and  person  late  in  their 
experience.  They  first  of  all  were  loyally 
bound  to  Him  in  bonds  of  love. 

When  men  have  once  honestly  made 
themselves  acquainted  with  the  Christ  of 
the  four  gospels,  they  will  either  see  that 
He  is  something  more  than  a  man,  or  they 
will  be  forced  to  abandon  the  four  gos- 
pels as  trustworthy  documents.  When  a 
man  has  done  that  he  will  find  not  only 
that  he  has  somehow  to  account  for  the 
existence  of  the  gospels,  but  he  will  see 
also  that  for  any  adequate  philosophy  of 
life  or  explanation  of  the  strange  world 
in  which  he  lives,  for  any  reasonable  hope 
of  a  true  destiny,  for  any  tentative  solu- 
tion of  life's  problems  and  sorrows,  his 
choice  lies  between  the  Christ  of  the  four 
gospels  and  nothing. 

Men  will  doubtless  be  kept  from  any 
such  result  because  of  a  strange  experi- 
ence they  have  in  any  sincere  study  of  the 
four  gospels.  Carnegie  Simpson  has 
called  special  attention  to  this  singular 
phenomenon.    We  begin  intellectually  to 


52     Message  of  the  Modern  Minister 

examine  Jesus,  we  soon  find  that  He  Is 
spiritually  examining  us.  We  read  Aris- 
totle and  are  edified.  We  read  Jesus 
and  are  spiritually  disturbed.  No  man 
can  honestly  study  Jesus  and  remain 
morally  non-committal.  If  men  had 
honestly  studied  Jesus,  It  would  have 
been  unnecessary  for  Washington  Glad- 
den to  have  Invented  the  term  "Applied 
Christianity,"  for  the  Christianity  of 
Christ  involves  the  necessity  of  making 
an  application  of  it.  This  leads  me  to 
say  that  one  of  the  first  needs  of  the 
church  of  to-day  Is  the  honesty  and  cour- 
age to  apply  the  principles  of  Jesus  to 
every  question  In  life.  Many  years  ago 
Roswell  D.  Hitchcock  said  that  the 
prime  need  of  our  time  Is  "to  Christian- 
ize Christendom."  Men  are  seeing  as 
they  never  saw  before  what  Is  written 
large  In  the  four  gospels,  that  every  polit- 
ical and  economic  and  social  problem  is 
at  bottom  a  religious  problem.  Men  are 
seeing  what  was  a  primary  teaching  of 
Jesus,  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as 
individual  goodness,  for  goodness  is  love 
and  cannot  be  shown  In  an  Isolated  life, 
for  love  Is  service  to  others.     Men  are 


Message  of  the  Modern  Minisler      53 

seeing  that  service  is  the  first  law  of  the 
Christian  Hfe,  that  happiness  and  heaven 
and  even  character  are  by-products  of 
service.  The  most  subtle  peril  of  reli- 
gious men  is  the  tendency  to  substitute 
emotional  loyalty  for  practical  loyalty; 
to  think  that  the  forgiveness  of  one's 
sins  makes  it  unnecessary  to  fight  against 
one's  sins.  If  a  man  says  he  believes  in 
cleanliness  but  will  not  get  into  the  bath- 
tub in  the  morning,  he  does  not  really  be- 
lieve in  cleanliness,  he  believes  only  in 
the  idea  of  cleanliness.  To  deserve  an 
honest  man's  respect,  a  religion  must 
produce  its  legitimate  product,  moral 
behavior.  At  this  point  the  religious 
leaders  in  Jesus'  day  failed  and  for  this 
reason  He  denounced  them.  If  our  re- 
ligious leaders  fail  it  will  be  for  the  same 
reason,  and  can  they  complain  if  honest 
men  repeat  Jesus'  verdict? 

Whatever  faults  the  church  has,  noth- 
ing is  gained  by  being  unfair  to  her,  and 
in  justice  could  it  not  be  said  that  she 
is  now  doing  more  for  the  betterment  of 
the  world  than  any  other  one  society? 
But  whether  they  are  justified  or  not, 
certainly  there   exists   a   large   class   of 


54     Message  of  the  Modern  Minister 

good  men  who  admire  the  church  more 
for  what  she  might  be  than  for  what 
she  is.  Why  this  is  so,  that  is  the  per- 
tinent question  for  the  church  to  ask  her- 
self. The  demand  which  our  day  is  mak- 
ing of  the  church  and  her  ministers  is 
that  they  stand  for  the  rediscovered 
fundamentals  of  Christ's  teaching.  It  is 
a  striking  and  suggestive  sight  to-day  to 
see  the  great  moral  and  religious  move- 
ments that  are  being  carried  on  outside 
the  Christian  Church,  inspired  indeed  by 
Christianity,  but  no  longer  controlled  or 
guided  by  organized  Christianity  alone. 
I  think  they  ought  to  be,  for  the  reason 
that  the  "proper  nurse  for  Moses  is 
Moses's  mother,"  not  that  the  leadership 
of  the  church  is  a  thing  to  be  sought  for 
its  own  sake,  but  the  real  question  for 
the  church  to-day  is  what  part  she  is  to 
have  in  the  regeneration  of  the  world, 
which  Christ  is  working  and  can  work 
either  with  or  without  the  help  of  the 
church. 

It  is  a  matter  of  serious  concern  for 
the  church  to  notice  that  although  men 
may  not  attend  the  church  as  much  as  they 
once  did,  yet,  at  the  same  time,  the  coun^ 


Message  of  the  Modern  Minister      55 

try  itself  is  more  Christian  now  than  ever 
before.  This  fact  indeed  constitutes  a 
challenge.  Side  by  side  with  this  con- 
dition there  exists  another  which  con- 
stitutes just  as  distinct  a  call  to  the 
church.  There  is  a  surprisingly  large 
number  of  men,  both  inside  and  outside 
of  the  church,  who  have  never  accepted 
the  spiritual  leadership  of  Jesus,  frankly 
alleging  as  the  reason,  their  opinion  that 
the  principles  of  Jesus  are  not  practicable 
for  the  social  and  economic  problems  of 
to-day;  that  the  golden  rule  is  a  beautiful 
sentiment,  but  will  not  work;  that  Jesus 
is  not  just  the  type  of  character  to  be  the 
ideal  for  a  business  man  of  to-day.  My 
contention  is  that  the  principles  of  Jesus 
are  the  most  practicable  principles  there 
are  and  the  only  principles  which  will 
produce  certain  results  which  men  profess 
to  seek.  Only  men  have  not  discovered 
that  this  is  so,  that's  all.  John  said  that 
Jesus  was  so  expert  in  His  knowledge  of 
men  that  in  forming  His  judgment  of 
them  He  did  not  need  the  help  of  His 
friends.  Yet  Jesus  was  the  purest- 
minded  of  men  and  knew  nothing  of  sin 
by    experience.      Purity    gave    Him    in- 


56     Message  of  the  Modern  Minister 

sight.  The  same  is  true  of  all  men.  Long 
before  Jesus  concretely  illustrated  it  in 
His  own  life,  Plato  stated  the  fact  and 
stated  as  its  explanation  that  vice  can 
never  know  both  itself  and  virtue,  but 
virtue  acquires  a  knowledge  at  once  of 
itself  and  of  vice.  It  remained  for  Jesus 
to  demonstrate  this  fact.  I  am  convinced 
that  it  is  quite  possible  to  demonstrate 
both  in  theory  and  practice,  even  from 
the  practical  standpoint  of  this  world's 
business,  that  the  wise  man  is  the  good 
man;  that  the  vicious  man  is  not  the 
clever  but  the  stupid  man.  It  still  re- 
mains for  Christian  men  to  accept  this 
principle  and  practice  it.  A  clear  under- 
standing of  this  truth  is  one  of  the  first 
needs  today  of  the  men  of  America  who 
are  constantly  tempted  to  admire  smart- 
ness rather  than  goodness.  Until  Chris- 
tian men  accept  this  fundamental  teach- 
ing of  Jesus  they  will  make  no  serious  at- 
tempt to  apply  His  other  teachings  to 
commercial  and  political  life.  To  demon- 
strate this  fact  is  a  duty  that  looms  large 
for  the  church  to-day.  It  constitutes  a  call 
for  leaders  of  honesty  and  courage,  by 
whom  alone  the  task  can  be  performed. 


Message  of  the  Modern  Minister      57 

I  regard  it,  therefore,  as  a  chief  duty  of 
the  minister  to  make  an  honest  effort  to 
apply  the  teachings  of  Jesus  to  all  the 
conditions  of  life.  It  was  a  true  instinct 
that  led  Longfellow,  in  his  drama, 
"Christus,"  which  occupied  so  large  a 
share  of  his  thought  and  life,  to  sum  up 
his  study  of  Christendom  in  the  apostolic, 
middle,  and  modern  ages,  by  this  signif- 
icant statement,  put  into  the  mouth  of 
John : 

"From  all  vain  pomps  and  shows, 
From  the  pride  that  overflows, 
And  the  false  conceits  of  men; 
From  all  the  narrow  rules, 
And  subtleties  of  Schools, 
And  the  craft  of  tongue  and  pen ; 
Bewildered  in  its  search, 
Bewildered  with  the  cry, 
Lo,  here!  lo,  there,  the  Church! 

/roor,  sad  Humanity- 
Through  all  the  dust  and  heat 
Turns  back  with  bleeding  feet, 
By  the  weary  road  it  came 
Unto  the  simple  thought 
By  the  great  Master  taught 
And  that  remaineth  still : 
Not  he  that  repeatcth  the  name. 
But  he  that^-^tTthe  will."  J 


M' 


"^MC. 


58      Message  of  the  Modern  Minister 

The  measure  of  the  church's  success  Is 
not  In  the  number  of  times  she  repeateth 
the  name,  but  the  degree  In  which  she 
doeth  the  will. 

The  five  statements  I  have  just  made 
are,  In  the  language  of  the  religious  ex- 
perience of  to-day,  the  "five  points"  of 
my  practical  working  theology. 

Sin  Is  a  reality  and  salvation  Is  a 
present  process. 

The  Intellect  Is  limited  and  faith  Is 
therefore  a  necessity. 

Life  must  be  construed,  not  In  terms  of 
matter,  but  of  spirit. 

The  cross  In  our  experience  Is  a  means 
to  a  good  end. 

The  Christ  of  the  gospels  Is  the  sole 
and  sufficient  guide  for  life. 

The  business  of  the  minister,  I  take  It, 
Is  to  be  a  witness  of  these  facts,  for  the 
gospel  of  Jesus  Is  essentially  a  factual 
religion.  This  Is  the  gospel  which  I 
think  Is  needed  for  our  age.  To  preach 
this  gospel,  I  call  Imperial  preaching,  for 
it  Is  the  gospel  needed  by  all  ages  and  by 
all  classes  of  men.  To  preach  Imperially 
means  that  a  man  must  not  pull  down  but 


Message  of  the  Modern  Minister      59 

build  up,  or  rather  must  never  pull  down 
except  for  the  purpose  of  building  up. 
If  sometimes  he  feels  it  his  duty  to 
destroy  what  he  believes  to  be  false,  even 
then  he  must  never  forget  that  "he  only 
destroys  who  can  replace." 

One  of  the  most  subtle  dangers  before 
the  minister  of  to-day  is  the  failure  to  see 
that  the  formulas  of  the  old  creeds  which 
once  were  alive  to  the  men  who  used 
them,  but  mean  little  to  the  men  of  to- 
day, that  these  formulas,  although  they 
seem  crude  and  inadequate  to  us,  never- 
theless stand  for  the  fundamental  facts 
of  Christianity,  and  the  manifest  needs 
of  human  life.  The  failure  to  see  this  has 
led  many  a  man  to  throw  away  the  es- 
sential thing  together  with  the  outgrown 
expression  of  it.  To  do  this  is  an  illog- 
ical act.  It  is  to  do  what  the  Germans 
say — "throw  out  the  baby  with  the  bath." 
In  this  revolt  against  the  old  formulas 
some  men  seem  never  able  to  get  rid  of 
their  feeling  of  resentment  against  them. 
Therefore  they  spend  much  of  their  time 
In  attacking  what  is  already  outgrown  in- 
stead of  putting  something  positive  in  its 
place.      Ihey  seem  never  able  to  realize 


6o     Message  of  the  Modern  Minister 

that  the  battle  is  over.     Nothing  could 
be  a  greater  mistake. 

The  great  task  before  the  minister  to- 
day is  to  restate  the  historic  facts  of 
Christianity  as  they  are  related  to  the 
deep  needs  of  the  human  heart,  in  the 
language  used  to-day,  so  that  they  may 
be  understood.  Many  men  to-day  lack 
a  sense  of  reality  and  enthusiasm  in  their 
religious  lives  just  because  they  have 
either  given  up  the  old  formulas,  or  hold 
to  them  in  a  half-hearted  way,  and  they 
have  found  nothing  else  to  take  their 
place.  The  same  sense  of  reality  and 
enthusiasm  which  characterized  the  men 
of  a  former  day  will  return  to  the  men  of 
our  day  as  soon  as  the  Christian  life  is  ex- 
plained to  them  in  terms  which  they  can 
understand.  It  will  be  the  discovery  and 
renascence  of  a  new  life  of  wonder  and 
faith  and  joy  such  as  Jesus  brought  to 
men  in  the  lanes  and  fields  of  Galilee. 
The  need  for  the  minister  who  will  do 
this  work  was  never  more  urgent  than 
now;  his  opportunity  never  so  excep- 
tional. In  doing  this  work,  the  minis- 
ter's true  relation  to  the  old  truths  is  well 
illustrated    by    an    experience    of    Asa 


Message  of  the  Modern  Minister      6i 

Holmes,  the  cross-roads  philosopher — 
*'The  last  time  I  went  East  to  visit  my 
grandson,"  said  the  old  man  medita- 
tively, "his  wife  showed  me  a  mahogany 
table  in  her  dining-room  which  she  said 
was  making  all  her  friends  break  the 
tenth  commandment.  It  was  a  hand- 
some piece  of  furniture,  worth  a  small 
fortune.  It  was  polished  till  you  could 
see  your  face  in  it,  and  I  thought  it  was 
the  newest  thing  out  in  tables,  till  she  told 
me  she'd  rummaged  it  out  of  her  great- 
grandmother's  attic  and  had  it  done  over 
as  she  called  it.  It  had  been  hidden 
away  in  the  dust  and  cobwebs  for  a  life- 
time, because  it  had  been  pronounced  too 
time-worn  and  battered  and  scratched  for 
longer  use;  yet  there  it  stood  just  as 
beautiful  and  useful  for  this  generation 
to  spread  its  feasts  upon  as  it  was  the  day 
it  was  made.  Every  whit  as  substantial, 
and,  aside  from  any  question  of  sentiment, 
a  thousand  times  more  valuable  than  the 
one  that  Dunk  Smith  drove  past  with 
just  now.  His  table  is  modern,  to  be 
sure,  but  it's  of  cheap  pine,  too  rickety  to 
serve  even  Dunk  through  his  one  short 
lifetime  of  movings."     The  task  before 


62      Message  of  the  Modern  Minister 

the  minister  to-day  is  to  "do  over"  the 
old  statements  of  the  historic  facts  of 
Christianity  and  the  essential  needs  of 
human  life.  There  can  be  no  doubt  but 
that  they  need  doing  over.  Many  layers 
of  dust  and  cobwebs  must  be  removed  if 
they  are  to  be  serviceable  to  men  now. 
But  when  we  have  done  that  we  shall  find 
that  after  all  they  are  the  things  of  real 
value,  they  are  solid  mahogany.  I  be- 
lieve if  we  go  deep  enough,  we  shall  find 
that  the  real  needs  of  the  men  of  every 
age  are  exactly  the  same,  however  diverse 
the  forms  they  assume.  Sin  is  still  the 
same  monotonous  reality  it  always  has 
been;  the  need  of  an  actual  atonement, 
of  a  harmony  between  man's  will  and 
God's,  still  is  the  deepest  need  of  human 
nature;  the  intellect  is  still  impotent  to 
find  ultimate  reality,  despite  the  im- 
mensely widened  horizons  which  mod- 
ern discoveries  have  created  in  man's 
outlook;  the  sanity  of  living  the  trustful 
life  is  still  as  apparent  to  men  of  the 
deepest  insight  as  it  ever  was;  the  task  of 
discovering  the  spiritual  meaning  of  life 
Is  still  the  chief  task  before  every  man 
who  is  awake;  the  cry  for  some  comfort 


Message  of  the  Modern  Minister     6^ 

Is  an  universal  cry  which  the  essential 
loneliness  of  life  compels  all  men  to 
utter;  the  moral  and  spiritual  leadership 
of  Jesus  will  remain  undisputed  so  long 
as  men  must  go  backward  for  their  mor- 
als to  him  as  they  are  now  doing. 


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